Smoke and Shadows
by Kita the Spaz
Summary: Kakashi was always expecting that jab, that hit, that hug to be the one to shatter the illusion of reality. It's all a shadow-play made of smoke and deception, because, after all, Iruka's not real.


Disclaimer: I do not now nor have I ever owned the characters or settings of Naruto. That's all Kishimoto-san's. Seriously, if I did, all those canon KakaIru moments (You know what ones I'm talking about) would be leading up to Naruto walking in on his Sensei's doing the nasty on Iruka's desk. Seriously.

Obligatory boring Author's note and standard information: This one is more than a little weird, I confess. It was written for a prompt on the Kakairu_kink meme. For a long time it lingered in a half-finished state on my harddrive, but was eventually unearthed and finished. Micah_n10 betaed the crap out of it, so kudos to her.

Like I said, this one is... a little odd. Let me know what you think, please. Creepy? Weird? WTF?

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**Smoke and Shadows**

Smoke and shadows…

Kakashi watched the clone of himself he had been sparring against pop out of existence.

A thing of illusion, filled with the shadow of the person who created them. Unreal, as fragile as a soap bubble— and just as easily popped. No matter how solid you made them, no matter how much of your chakra you put into them, they were still nothing more than a shadow.

All except _one._

Kakashi heard laughter and turned to see Naruto held in a playful headlock by Iruka-sensei. The boy squirmed and kicked to be free, but he could not escape the hand that tousled his blond hair.

Iruka laughed. "Soon you'll be too tall for me to do that easily. When you're taller than me, I'll make you buy the ramen!"

Naruto squawked indignantly.

Iruka chuckled again and released Naruto with a wide grin. "But that's not today, so I suppose the ramen is still on me."

The boy flung his arms around Iruka and something deep inside Kakashi cringed, waiting…

…For a moment that never happened as Iruka slung his arm over Naruto's shoulders and led him off to seek Ichiraku's.

Miserably, Kakashi followed.

He lingered in the shadows of a building across the road from the small stand, watching the easy camaraderie between the man and the teen.

Iruka was everything he was not, bright and cheerful where he was solemn and colorless. Iruka loved easily and gave so much of himself, while Kakashi had only a few close friends and hid himself behind a mask, a book, and a careful web of half-truths.

Iruka was everything good and what a true shinobi should be—and he wasn't even real.

He was a shadow, an image created for a lonely child to talk to.

Kakashi had only been a child when the one person in the world he had loved with all his heart had committed suicide. He'd been the one to find his father, lying in a pool of cooling blood and spilled entrails.

It had taken his sensei, the Fourth, to pry him from his death-grip on his father's cooling body. For a week he had not spoken, sitting dully in the hospital bed and eating only when food was forced upon him.

Eventually, Yondaime had taken his student in, installing him in his own home where an eye could be kept on him.

Kakashi spoke to no one and refused all human contact. He sought comfort in books and scrolls and finally decided to use the knowledge gained from them to create a friend. One who would _not leave him. _

It had taken all his considerable chakra and every bit of his strength, but he had created a clone.

He'd passed out and had awoken a day later, with his clone bending over him and putting a folded cloth on his head.

When he'd had some of his strength back, he'd altered the clone, giving it brown hair and eyes like his mother and some of her outgoing personality. The scar was added on a whim, trying to make them look different, but for all his work, their faces remained the same, one tanned and the other pale as milk, but essentially identical.

It had been his shadow's idea to wear a mask, but Kakashi had vetoed it. Even if he was just a clone, he wanted to see his friends face; openly and freely wearing the expressions he couldn't. So he had put on the mask, claiming aloud that it was because he looked like his father.

Yondaime had known better and after a single, meaningful look… had let it pass unremarked.

Kakashi had kept the clone hidden from Yondaime-sensei— from everyone— talking to him and feeling some of his anger and bleak despair lifting with every word. He was an anchor, an outlet for the rage and the fear.

Then, he was given a solo mission. An infiltration mission where his youth and small size would let him pass unremarked. It would be long term and he would not be in contact with the village for a long time.

He couldn't bear to dispel his only real friend, and smiling, his shadow took his hand and assured him that he would be fine and would wait for his return.

Four months later he had dragged in, wounded and sick at heart, even though the mission was a success.

But his rooms were empty, and his friend was nowhere to be found. He couldn't even sense him. Frantic, he had summoned up every bit of his chakra and tried to summon him back. The effort had left him flat on his back with a pounding head and a room that remained empty.

Yondaime-sensei found him and took him to the hospital, where he remained for nearly a month. Heartsick and unwilling to eat, he was losing weight rapidly when he saw him, his _friend…_ laughing and giggling and holding onto the hand of a grinning kunoichi. She patted him on the head and told him that they would be late if they didn't hurry.

Kakashi flinched as he heard his clone call her '_mother.'_

He broke out of the hospital that night and trailed his scent (his own scent; but oddly _changed_) to a modest apartment. The kanji on the nameplate said Umino. He peered in the window and saw him, _his_ friend— sleeping contentedly in a futon, between a man and woman.

All of his anger and despair boiled up and he was gathering chakra into his hand to kill those who would steal his only friend—

A firm hand had clamped down on his shoulder and he had looked up into Sensei's blue eyes; stern and sad and _knowing._

"_Sensei…?"_ The reality of what he was doing hit him and he started shaking. Strong hands caught him before he could collapse.

Yondaime had carried him away, crying and frightened of himself, of the anger he had almost unleashed on people of his own village. After several attempts to calm him had failed, Yondaime had taken him to his predecessor.

Sarutobi, who had patiently soothed him and had explained that the jutsu he had used was forbidden and why. What he had done; all unknowing.

It had made him feel almost as evil as Orochimaru.

Sickened, Kakashi begged Sarutobi to erase the clone's memories of him. "Let him live as long as he can with no knowledge of what I did."

Sarutobi smiled sadly at him and reached out to pat his shoulder, not the patronizing pat of an elder to a child but that of one comrade to another. "You are a very wise person."

And so a lonely child's friend had become Umino Iruka, a person in his own right.

And for a long time, Kakashi had forced himself to forget, to push his shadow to the place where all such things belong; in the shadows.

He threw himself into his training, expunging everything that wasn't the perfect ninja.

The façade only cracked when Obito died.

A week later he had slunk back to a small apartment and had stared at a boy who was at once a separate thing— and part of himself— with an eye that was not his own. Obito's eye wept tears he could not shed and he had fled once more into the night.

When the Fourth died, he threw himself into ANBU training, hiding his face behind another mask; yet another way to hide.

In ANBU he did not have to _think_; did not have to remember.

That lasted until Sarutobi had forbidden him from taking any more missions, citing that he was a blade worn thin and in need of re-tempering before he could be an effective weapon again.

So he built a new mask. He was Sharingan no Kakashi, wielder of a thousand jutsu, and he could not be bothered to drag his nose out of a rather infamous orange book. He was still deadly, and the Third could not keep him mewed up forever.

After he failed three teams, Sandaime just looked at him with amusement and said, "It won't work, you know. You can't keep people away forever." Then he had handed him the files on the newest candidates. "I trust these you won't fail."

And he hadn't.

Not for lack of trying, but they were stubborn, hard-headed and in the case of one particularly orange brat, loud. And they had brought a certain chuunin sensei back into his life—a man who would not allow himself to be forgotten.

When Kakashi had dared to nominate his team for the chuunin exams, he had stood right up and defied him.

Stunned, Kakashi had fired back words he knew were hurtful, knew were ill-conceived, but had spat anyway. For a moment, that blinding rage was back. How _dare—_

He had stopped himself, sickened again.

It wasn't until days later, when the chuunin had apologized for doubting him, that he had been able to forgive himself.

Laughter brought him out of his reverie and he watched Iruka playfully wrestle with Naruto as they tromped up the street. He couldn't help but wince every time Naruto got a hit in; always expecting in the back of his mind, that jab, that hit, that _hug_ to be the one that would shatter the illusion and turn the clone back to smoke.

"Damn it."

He was halfway back home when a firm hand stopped him dead. It took almost a full second to realize why he hadn't felt them coming. It was his own chakra, though strangely attenuated, and glowing a soft, warm yellow rather than electric blue-white.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

Swallowing hard, he turned, injecting his voice with false cheer. "Yo, Iruka sensei." He couldn't make himself meet those brown eyes.

"Why have you been following me all day?"

"Meh, no reason," he temporized. "Just keeping an eye on the brat."

Soft amusement flavored Iruka's next words. "Naruto wasn't with me when I was shopping this morning, nor when I had some tea at the tea shop. Try again."

Only his training kept him from flinching. "Eh, I was bored…?"

Iruka's soft laughter filled the air. "If you were bored, you'd go read. One more try?"

Kakashi hesitated, searching his brain for a plausible excuse.

"Would you like a cup of tea while you try to think of another excuse I might buy?"

Iruka led the way back to the same tea shop Kakashi had followed him to earlier. After they had been served, he watched Kakashi with a patient smile.

Kakashi stirred his tea restlessly, unwilling to drink it and desperately searching for something to say.

Iruka broke the silence after it had stretched to uncomfortably long proportions. "Have you come up with an excuse yet?"

Surprised, Kakashi chuckled. "No. Still thinking, in fact."

"Good," Iruka said. "That'll keep you quiet while I say a few things."

Kakashi didn't let his internal flinch cross his features. He wasn't looking forward to Iruka lecturing him on his stalking.

"You know, when Sandaime-sama died, the memory-block he put on me broke. I remember everything."

Kakashi froze, numb and unable to even formulate a question. "Eeh…?"

"I remember it all. But I'm not the same person I was then. I grew up as another person entirely, separate from the child I once was."

"Iruka…" Kakashi managed.

"When I remembered, I wanted to hate you, but I couldn't. Because I remembered that I loved you." Iruka's brown eyes were steady. "Not as a clone should have, not even as a brother should."

Kakashi was unable to move.

Iruka reached across the table and touched his fabric-covered cheek. "You dabbled in something forbidden and created not a clone, but an entirely new person; one with his own mind. And I've grown apart from you enough to know my own mind. I still love you and, if I don't repulse you, I would like to…" Iruka hesitated and a flush crept across his cheeks. "I would like to start over. Me as me and you as you, and maybe you could learn to love me as I have always loved you."

Kakashi's throat felt strangely thick. "I don't think that's possible."

Hurt flashed across those familiar features.

"Because I never stopped. Loving you like that, I mean."


End file.
